Denver-based Evergreen Resources Inc. on Tuesday was awarded the lease rights on three tracts covering 14,908 acres of prospective coalbed methane (CBM) properties in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley. Evergreen was high bidder on the tracts at the 2001 Northern Cook Inlet Basin oil and gas lease sale in September, held by the Alaska Mental Health Land Office.

With bids totaling $106,338 for a 100% working interest in the acreage, the leases are contiguous with existing ownership in Evergreen’s 48,000 acre Pioneer Unit there. The area is about 30 miles north of Anchorage. CEO Mark S. Sexton said that the independent now owns 100% interests in nearly 63,000 acres of “highly prospective CBM properties,” which he said have access to the emerging natural gas markets in the Anchorage area. Evergreen’s current operations are principally focused on developing and expanding its CBM project in the Raton Basin of southern Colorado.

Congress established the Alaska Mental Health Trust in 1956 that included a grant of one million acres of land to be used to generate revenues to meet the expenses of mental health programs in the state.

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